Geoffrey Crowther, Baron Crowther
|
The Right Honourable The Lord Crowther |
|
|---|---|
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Geoffrey Crowther 13 May 1907 Headingley, Leeds, England |
| Died | 5 February 1972 (aged 64) Heathrow Airport, London, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Journalist, businessman |
Geoffrey Crowther, Baron Crowther (13 May 1907 – 5 February 1972) was a British economist, journalist, educationalist and businessman. He was editor of The Economist from 1938 to 1956.
Crowther was born in Headingley, Leeds on 13 May 1907. He was educated at Leeds Grammar School and Oundle School before gaining a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge to read modern languages, in which he took a first in 1928. He then changed to economics and was awarded an upper first class degree in 1929. He was elected president of the Cambridge Union Society in 1928.
Donald Tyerman said of him that "Crowther's self-awareness and self-confidence were not so much asserted as taken for granted. But men who did well enough in life after Cambridge were in despair when they saw how sure it seemed that he would succeed in whatever he chose to do."
In 1929 he was awarded a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship. He spent a year at Yale, where he met his wife Peggy and then, while nominally attached to Columbia University, he spent a year on Wall Street. From 1931 he worked in a London merchant bank and on the recommendation of John Maynard Keynes became an advisor on banking to the Irish Government. He married Peggy in 1932 and after a further recommendation from Keynes joined the staff of The Economist in the same year.
He joined The Economist in 1932 and was made deputy editor in 1935. In August 1938, he succeeded Walter Layton to become, at the age of 31, the youngest editor in the newspaper's history.
Under his editorship, The Economist's circulation grew fivefold. It became one of the most influential journals in the world and "made greater progress in every way than in any similar period in its history".
...
Wikipedia